Category: 2026

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Librarianship in 2036: A Forecast and Why It Will Be Wrong

“Librarianship in 2036: A Forecast and Why It Will Be Wrong” Keynote, MetLib 2026. The Netherlands

Abstract: Predicting the future is a dangerous business, often producing a vision of today dressed in science fiction clothing that downplays the hard work of making change. But a wrong vision still provides direction, and it shapes our actions even as the image gets refined. We are at the start of an information shock that will reshape our communities and our profession, so here is my attempt at 2036: a revived market for human-made work, a federated AI running at the edges of the network, accountable conversants who test what people learn from AI against the public record, and a librarianship split between stewarding that record and direct community work. I do not expect to be right, and I would rather we all guess badly than not guess at all.

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From the Care of Bodies to the Care of Minds

“From the Care of Bodies to the Care of Minds,” Keynote for the opening of the new public library, Cuneo, Italy

Abstract: Keynote for the opening of Cuneo’s new public library, housed in a former hospital. Lankes argues generative AI marks an information shock as consequential as the postwar arrival of the digital computer. Libraries spent decades teaching skepticism; the crisis is universal suspicion, where fakes erode trust in the genuine and leave people isolated. AI produces documents that existing tools can evaluate, and it holds conversations that build belief while answering to no one. Lankes positions the librarian as an accountable conversant, a community member who can be called back when wrong, and closes with requests of librarians, residents, artists, and civic leaders.

Video: [note, the audio for this screencast was made after the event so it can be shared]

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The AI-Induced Shock

“The AI-Induced Shock” Keynote Panel Presentation. IFLA World Library and Information Congress. Busan, South Korea (video).

Abstract: Generative AI is not just flooding the world with more content. It is changing where understanding gets made. In a live chat exchange, meaning is built between a person and a machine, and no stable object is left behind to point to, check, or hold accountable. That is what makes this moment a genuine break, not a louder version of the information shock our field absorbed 80 years ago. AI literacy still works on synthetic essays and fabricated citations. It has nothing to grip when the only output of an exchange is what someone now believes. This talk proposes a role for librarians in that gap: the accountable conversant, a credible person building trusted places and answerable for what people carry away.

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